For community and backyard gardeners across Denver, it’s harvest season, and the pounds of produce are accumulating fast. And increasingly, thanks to a young-but-growing initiative called Produce for Pantries, the vegetable bounty isn’t limited to the kitchens of those who do the gardening.

About 40 gardeners in and around the city have registered with Produce for Pantries, which has about 15 official partner organizations, to donate part of their harvest to area food pantries and hunger relief organizations.

Metro CareRing, one of the organizations receiving donated produce, is dedicated to offering a week’s worth of food for individuals and families, but perhaps more importantly, to ensuring that a lot of it is fresh produce — fruits and vegetables, which are often more expensive and harder to find in neighborhoods lacking large grocery stores.

Lynne Butler, Metro CareRing’s executive director, said that 62 percent of the food they provide is fresh. And people who “shop” here (the food is provided free of charge) notice the abundance of fruits and vegetables.

“I have pictures of kids — you would think it’s Christmas,” said Butler. “Kids get excited about strawberries — or at the idea that they’re going to have a salad. Fresh food is so expensive.”

She recalled another client, a senior citizen on fixed income who had to stop buying oranges because prices jumped this season. “He comes to Metro CareRing and he’s so excited about the fact that he can get fresh produce here,” she said. “He wouldn’t otherwise be able to have these items because his income is so limited.”

Metro CareRing has reliable sources of produce outside of Produce for Pantries — they get regular donations from supermarkets (of produce that may be too ripe to sell, for example) — but for Metro and other food pantries around Denver and increasingly around the state, Produce for Pantries is proving to be a boon to their ability to supply fresh produce.

“We’re relying tremendously on Produce for Pantries and many other famers, local gardeners, and people who understand the importance of fruits and vegetables,” said Butler.

Produce for Pantries tries to recruit participants, including with billboards like this one on South Parker Rd. (Photo: Dana Miller)

According to Dana Miller, co-founder of Produce for Pantries, partnering gardeners have so far reported (reporting is voluntary) donations of about 8,000 pounds of produce this year — a number that’s expected to spike before the end of the season, as the harvest is just now starting to peak.

Donna Baker-Breningstall, a gardener in Denver, said she has 18 vegetable beds at her log cabin home, along with a small orchard, perennial beds and berry patches. “Most of the food we grow goes to our local food pantry every Friday morning,” she said.

Miller doesn’t have any data to illustrate where the bulk of donations are coming from or where they are going — data collection is something they’re first working on this year — but it’s clear that the collaboration is strong. Community gardens in the Denver Urban Gardens network are participating, as are individual gardeners like Baker-Breningstall.

Miller said, “In the future, we hope that there will be hundreds and hundreds of gardeners from all over the state that sign up to be Produce for Pantries gardeners.”